It's warm during the days but cold at night. I’m sitting in front
of an empty grate. Dad used to light the fires. In fact it was
something we used to do together. He showed me how to roll the
newspaper and tie it into a loose knot, how to lay the kindling and
space the smaller pieces of coal. After he left, Mum said lighting
the fire was too much trouble. It meant too much clearing up. She
didn't have the time. So I laid a fire once. I did it just as he
taught me. I thought Mum would be pleased. But when she got home she
went mad. What did I think I was doing with the matches! I could
have burnt the house down! But she was wrong. The fire wouldn't
light. It sputtered and went out. Just charred sticks in the grace.

I want to light a fire now. Or maybe I just want to have a fire
lit. Which is different of course, and involves my dad walking
through the door and doing it. Which he won't. Not least because he
lives sixty miles away and can't visit often. He has a new family
now. Jo's two girls (Annabelle who's older than me and Louise who's
just younger) and the new baby, Lewis. Lewis must be about one and a
half now. My step-brother. I've only seen him once. I sent him a
tower of stacking beakers for his first birthday. I bought them with
my own money. It's on account of having so many new birth dates to
remember that Dad sometimes forgets mine, Mum says. The last present
Dad actually gave me on the day was the soldiers for my eighth
birthday. I wouldn't swop them for anything in the world now. But
then I was disappointed. I'd wanted an aeroplane. One I could make
fly. Ride the wind. You see, I've always dreamed of being a pilot. I
let that slip to Niker once.

“They don't train blind people for pilots,” he said, wibbling my
glasses up and down on my nose.

I asked Mum if that was true.

“I think there are certainly strict medicals,” she said.

I took that to mean they don't train blind people like me. And I
haven't mentioned it since. But I still have my dreams and in my
dreams I fly. Not in a plane but with my arms outstretched, gliding,
swooping, rising and falling with the hot air currents. And it feels
good. It feels powerful. I never feel that power when I'm awake.
Awake I am something feeble. Something laughed at.

Of course I’m thinking about Edith Sorrel's words: “You can fly,
Robert. You are the sort of boy who can fly.”

And of course I'm also thinking of Niker's story of the boy who
tried to fly from 26 St Aubyns and fell to his strawberry-jam death.
And while I know it's only a coincidence - because Edith didn't mean
what she said literally, did not expect me to take off and fly about
her room, and Niker's story was just that, a story - I cannot help
feeling the connection. And that's another reason why I'm going to
go to the top of Chance House. Because it feels personal. Not just
Edith Sorrel's story but mine too.

“Penny for them.”

“Hello, Mum.”

She ruffles my hair. “You didn't hear me come in, did you?”

“No.”

“You must have a very vivid inner life.” She sits down. “Go on
then, what were you thinking about?”

“'Nothing.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Selective memory.”

“What?”

“Selective memory, what is it?”

“Selective memory is when I tell you you can have a chocolate
biscuit if you tidy your room, and you remember to take the biscuit
but forget to tidy yow room.”

“Seriously. Mum.”

“I am being serious. That's what it is. Choosing to remember some
things and forget others. And it normally involves remembering the
good things and forgetting the bad. Why do you want to know?”

“Someone accused my Elder of having a selective memory.”

“Who?”

“Her husband.”

“Oh well - there are lots of things between husbands and wives
you’d want to forget.”
“Like when Dad hit you?” I don't know why I say this. I don't know
why it's on my mind.
She looks at me. “No. I'm not likely to forget that.” There's a
pause. “I'm sorry I didn't even know you knew. But it was only the
once. And I did hit him back. It was a two-way thing, you know.” She
sighs. “I thought you were asleep.”

I shrug.

“I guess it was difficult to be asleep. Right? Maybe I just wanted
you to be asleep. Maybe that's the selective memory bit.” She
smiles. “OK?”

“Take the war. Men ‘forget’ the terrible killing they saw. Your
Great-Granddad - my Granda - it was like that for him. Never wanted
to talk about the trenches. He was at the Somme, you know. He lived
and others died. It's difficult, being a survivor. You feel guilty.”

She pulls her cardigan tighter about her. “Getting chilly isn't it?
Maybe it's the gloomy talk. What would you say to a hot chocolate?”

“Good evening, hot chocolate.” That was one of Dad's jokes. Both of
us laugh limply and she goes into the kitchen.

I don't want to compare the Grape Incident to the Great War, but
this is what I'm thinking. Maybe I have selective memory about this.
Maybe refusing to talk about what happened is my way of refusing to
think about it. But the Grape Incident keeps popping into my brain,
keeps on nagging. Like Chance House nagged. Then I wonder two
things: first - did the Somme nag Great-Grandpa Cutting? Second –
what exactly is it that's nagging Edith Sorrel?

I follow Mum into the kitchen and watch the gas hiss under the pan
of milk.

“How does old age affect memory?” I ask.

“Generally speaking, you just become increasingly forgetful. Just
last week I managed to leave my purse in the house...”

“No. Really old people.”

“Short-term memory,” says Mum. “That's what normally goes first. A
person won't be able to tell you what they had for breakfast whereas
they will be able to describe in perfect detail an event that
happened fifty years ago.”

“Does that mean,” I venture, “that, if you'd tried to forget
something, something that happened to you, say, thirty years ago,
that you might suddenly “remember” it in old age?”

“I'm not sure. I think you can bury stuff so deep you never uncover
it.

“So if you did begin to remember,” I press, “then some part of you
must want to find out, want to examine the horrid thing?”

“What are you getting at, Robert?”

“Nothing. Just asking.”

“Has old Mrs Sorrel got some skeleton in the cupboard?”

“Old Miss Sorrel.” I say.

“I thought you said she had a husband?”

“She has someone who says he is her husband.”

“Oh - and what does she say?”

I'm still considering this when, in the front room, the phone
rings.

The milk is on the boil. “Can you get that for me, Robert?”

I go to the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Robert.”

“Hello, Dad,” I whisper. If Mum knows it's him she'll come, milk or
no milk.

“All right?”

“Fine.”

“Good day at school?”

“Great.”

Silence.

“Ahem.” Dad coughing.

“All right, Dad?”

“Course. Fine.”

Sometimes I blame him. That he never asks the right questions. That
we only ever talk at this useless monosyllabic level. Then I think
it must be me. That I don't give the right answers. That I should
say: Actually I'm not all right because it's cold and you're not
here to lay a fire. And school wasn't great either because I met
Ernest Sorrel at the Home, and I don't want to believe that the boy
who fell out of the Top Floor Flat of Chance House was Edith
Sorrel's son, because she said she didn't have a son. But then she
said she didn't have a husband either. And I feel quite frightened
because I'm going to go to the top of a derelict house and I want
someone to tell me not to go, but no-one knows I'm going so they
can't. And by the way, does my mind run round in circles like this
because I'm mad? Or because Niker really has got an implant in my
brain? And Dad, Dad, were you ever frightened of a boy at school? I
mean really frightened? And...

“Robert?”

“Yes?”

“Can you get your mother?”

“Mum - it's Dad.” I put down the receiver. Then I pick it up again.
“Are we going to see you Saturday?”

“That's what I want to speak to your mother about.”

Mum comes into the room with two steaming mugs of chocolate. They
smell of the time when Dad and Mum and I used to sit together in
front of a blazing winter fire.
“Hello, Nigel. Yes. No. I see.”

Mum’s mouth goes into a tight line. He's telling her something she
doesn't want to hear. And I know what it is. There's some problem
about Saturday. One of the children - Dad s new children - is ill
maybe. Or there's a clash with an appointment of Jo's, she needs the
car. It's all off. He isn't coming.

“Right.” says Mum. “Well, I think it's important for Robert that we
make another time, don't you? Have you got your diary?”

“Don't bother,” I say. “Don't bother. It doesn't matter.”

“Robert...” she calls after me.

But I'm away. I'm up the stalls and in my bedroom with the door
shut and wedged.
Mum will follow me. She always does. Tries to comfort me. But what
good is that? The way I look at it is - I'm on my own. So I'd better
get used to it.